LEARNING OBJECTIVES
■ Understand basic copyright issues
■ Experiment, learn and practise
■ Diversity is key
For those of you starting your creative journey as an artist, no matter the medium, finding your own style is often considered like a proper achievement, a tangible milestone. There is an understandable desire to be settled and comfortable into a specific genre and aesthetic, and confidently produce art that could be instantly recognisable by friends, peers and collectors. But what does ‘your own style’ mean? How do you find it and how long will it take to get there? Let’s explore these questions below, while covering the many myths and preconceptions around the subject.
What is style?
The style of an artist is more than the choice of medium or subject. It is usually a combination of many elements that keep appearing across the artist’s work to give it a distinct feel, aesthetic, and personality.
Amongst those elements can be:
1 The choice of colours – hue, saturation, and temperature.
2 The tonal range – dark, light, contrasted vs values close to each other.
3 The choice of composition – how to crop the subject, use of focal point, or perspective.
4 The application of paint, such as the texture of brushstrokes, or the paint’s transparency.
The message and meaning behind the painting – is the work purely aesthetic or is there a political or social
